Between the lines, p.5
Between the Lines, page 5
I miss him, and I never met him. What defined the Bourdain universe?
For me, it was his sense of collaboration. I’m not a team player—the idea of group projects in school terrified me. Through Tony I saw that collaboration makes something bigger and better. He knew his strengths and when a project would be better served by somebody else. He did have a hand in every aspect of his work, but he also really trusted the people around him and was happiest working with a friend.
Why are we so defined by our work?
New York is not a leisure town. How much you work, where you work, and how much money you make is a badge of honor. People who have too much leisure time are sometimes looked at with a little skepticism. [Laughs.] This book, Working, is an oral history, which I love so much. Studs Terkel conducted interviews about people’s work, if they liked it or had other ambitions. You can hear from a sanitation truck driver, a sex worker, and a factory owner. The nature of work has changed a lot but talking about what we do is universal. When you get into a cab, nine times out of ten, you’re going to talk to the taxi driver about what they did in the country they used to live in, or what their kids do, or what you do. We’re always in each other’s business.
If you and Tony could go anywhere right now, where would you go?
There was a nondescript dive bar, the Coliseum, across the street from Tony’s apartment that he loved. I’d be very happy to go there for a plate of chicken wings to shoot the shit.
61st Street–Woodside station
Queens, 2020
Marquis Williams
The Wine Bible by Karen MacNeil
I’m from Harlem, I’m thirty-two years old, and I got my start as a stock boy at a wine shop on the Upper West Side. I’ve worked at wine shops all over the city, always filling in shifts everywhere. I moved up to shipper, then I became a salesperson, a manager, and then a buyer. Now I run my own wine club called Highly Recommended and I have my own wine coming out.
Why do we love wine so much?
I love it because wine is community-based. I love the togetherness I feel when I’m with the winemakers. They’re often with their family and friends and there are always smiles and food going around. I also love that wine is a field where you can never know everything. The Wine Bible is a very good reference point. Karen MacNeil tells you everything you need to know. It’s an easy but informative read, no matter what level you’re on. She’s not using vernacular that only wine people know and she doesn’t go over your head. I think that’s how wine is supposed to be. I really appreciate this book.
Wine, like literature, can be seen as kind of an elitist thing.
Yeah, but I think wine is super casual, fun, and there shouldn’t be any stigma around it. I try my best to let people know that it’s okay if they like sweet wine, and I also try to broaden their palates. People tell me, “I would never drink wine, but you make it approachable and you speak my language.” That’s what life’s about, trying new things and exploring your mind.
What is a fun fact about wine that most people won’t know?
There are five million bubbles in a champagne bottle. Champagne is one of my favorite categories and I will read anything I can about it. I’m called the Riesling Don and the Champagne King. I could drink those two for the rest of my life and be happy.
125th Street station
Manhattan, 2021
Britta Plug
When Watched: Stories by Leopoldine Core
The other day I randomly stopped into a bookstore to look for short stories, something light. I picked up When Watched and went on to enjoy my day by having lunch at Angelica Kitchen. The waiter asked if I knew the author, Leopoldine Core. He told me that she eats at the restaurant all the time, and that in fact I was sitting in her seat. I felt like I was in the right place at the right time reading exactly the right book. I felt so close to Leopoldine and her stories that I kept looking for clues to see if she left any hidden answers in the restaurant for me.
14th Street–Union Square station
Manhattan, 2017
Camille Becerra
Save Me the Plums: My Gourmet Memoir by Ruth Reichl
I’ve been a chef in downtown Manhattan and in Brooklyn for many years. I got my start at Angelica Kitchen, which sadly has since been closed. It was vegan with heavy macrobiotic philosophies. They were very community-focused, and half an hour before closing, they would pack up whatever food was left over, and all these young artists from the East Village would line up to get their little box of food at the end of the night. It was a really wonderful place to learn how to cook. When I started, the whole food scene was made of male chefs.
What kind of food do you like to make?
I’m very much into vegetarian cooking and I like to get my produce from the farmers’ market at Union Square. I think that a vegetarian kitchen often feels safer to a female chef. A gentler way of eating translates to the back of the house, too.
Is Ruth Reichl’s book nourishing you?
I have always looked up to Ruth Reichl and I was obsessed with Gourmet magazine, where she was the editor in chief. I just started reading Save Me the Plums, and it’s great to read about the city through her lens. There was this restaurant in the ’70s that was run by hippies in SoHo called Food, and Ruth Reichl used to bake there. It sounds very punk rock. [Laughs.] I love to stroll down memory lane. In this book, you really see how Ruth stepped out of the norm by writing about old-school restaurants. Even though they weren’t the most elegant or didn’t have the best service, she understood that their food was important, so she went out of her way to visit them, critique them, and make them notable. The people she photographed and wrote about were real and personable, yet they were in magazines. As a young girl from New Jersey who is Puerto Rican, that was powerful. Ruth showed me that the most beautiful food is made with love and care. I will always remember that.
Prince Street station
Manhattan, 2020
Samhita Mukhopadhyay
Bengali Harlem and the Lost Histories of South Asian America by Vivek Bald
I’m about as New York as they come. [Laughs.] I am a feminist, a journalist, and currently the executive editor at Teen Vogue. I was born at Beth Israel on 16th Street and 1st Avenue and practically raised at my parents’ Hindu temple at 94th and Madison. It’s in an old brownstone that’s been there since the late ’60s. It’s a somber, quiet place that always smells like flowers and incense. My mother ran the choir for many years, and we would spend every Sunday at the temple. The only time my brother and I would leave was to run out and get pizza.
How would you describe the mythology of the temple that is Condé Nast?
I didn’t go to school for journalism—I have a master’s in transnational feminist theory—so I’m a bit of a media outsider. Obviously I’ve seen The Devil Wears Prada and it was pretty cool to walk into a place that everyone talks about. [Laughs.] Some things are true, it definitely is very fashion-forward, but you also ask yourself, “Are the people working there creating the culture, or are the people who are talking about it creating the culture?”
I love magazines. I used to make a lot of vision boards. They came in very handy.
Magazines are powerful. They’re a place of aspiration but they are also a readily updated historical document. Making history visible is majorly important. In Bengali Harlem, Vivek Bald shares the stories of Muslim Bengali immigrants who came to the United States in the early 1900s. This is the profound, deep, unwritten history of our spiritual aunts and uncles. We don’t know that they were here before the early ’70s. We don’t know that Punjabi migrant workers helped to build the transcontinental railroad in the late 1800s. We don’t know that they were not allowed to be in the photographs like the Chinese workers.
It’s so sad that we can’t rely on gatekeepers to create visibility.
Honestly, the constant process of writing ourselves into history is exhausting, and I sometimes wonder if anybody wants to read about it. But we are proof of our ancestors’ dreams and my history is as much part of the fabric of this country as everybody else’s. There’s always something else under the layer of the stories we’ve been told.
96th Street station
Manhattan, 2020
Naydeline Mejia
Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower by Brittney Cooper
Brittney Cooper is an incredible writer and cultural critic. She says that we can rediscover our power through our anger. What a message! She very clearly says that the stereotype of “the angry Black woman” is used to put us down and an attempt to make non-Black people fearful of us. Cooper takes back that stereotype, reworks it, and says, “Yes, I am angry, but my anger is powerful and can be used to create positive change.”
How are racism, discrimination, and prejudice different from each other?
There’s a common misconception that anyone can be racist, but that’s not true because racism has to do with power. You can be discriminatory, and you can be prejudiced, but if you don’t hold power in society, you technically can’t be racist. Prejudice is thoughts or beliefs that you have toward another group of people, and discrimination is the action that results from that prejudice. Every white person is not racist, but every white person has the potential to be racist because they hold the most systemic power in our society.
Thank you. That’s the best breakdown ever. Are you angry?
I hold a lot of anger, but I don’t express it as much as I would like to. I don’t think Black anger is taken very seriously in this country, and when people of color express anger, it’s treated like an overreaction. But it is something I always think about and carry with me. If you were constantly seen and treated as a threat to society, wouldn’t you be angry, too?
28th Street station
Manhattan, 2020
Natalie Falcon
Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain
I’m trying to figure out if I’m an introvert or an extrovert. I like being alone and I recharge from being alone, but I also feel happy when I’m with other people. I hope to learn more about introversion from Susan Cain because she redefines it, which is amazing. When we think of introverts, we often think of them as inferior or lacking. I’m quiet, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have a lot to say. Quiet begins with an anecdote about Rosa Parks and how she started a whole revolution with just one word. She said “no” when she was told to give up her seat on the bus. Her delivery was powerful. It was a quiet fortitude.
Quiet fortitude. I love that.
We never hear someone described as “quiet and strong.” When I was younger, my parents would say, “Oh, she’s just a shy little girl.” Why is it bad that I’m quiet? What if I just don’t like making pointless conversation? Someone wrote “small talk equals small thoughts” on a mirror in the public library and I completely agree. I would rather think and not talk at all. [Laughs.] Why should I work so hard? I’m totally okay the way I am.
42nd Street–Bryant Park station
Manhattan, 2020
Dontàe Lewis
The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle
I’ve been reading this book for the last four years. Eckhart Tolle speaks about enlightenment, breaking down the ego, and reducing self-identification. He wants to remind people that they are connected to everything and everyone. It’s a struggle. It’s almost like my mind doesn’t want to face the fact that everything I think I know and identify with is false. [Laughs.] We’re more than our jobs, our cars, and our apartments. Knowing this, I feel that I will be okay. I’m learning that I don’t have to have an external identity. It’s important to find my internal identity first.
Broadway–Lafayette Street station
Manhattan, 2015
Lakshmi Subramanian
The Folded Clock: A Diary by Heidi Julavits
The Folded Clock is a series of anecdotes that recount seemingly trivial moments in the author’s life in detail. I relate to how Heidi Julavits describes these moments and how she connects to them. There is one story I just read that’s about a yard sale. Heidi finds an item that she really wants, but someone else tries to take it before she does. Heidi becomes obsessive and decides that she must have it. Usually, she is the kind of person who backs down, but not this time!
Are you someone who backs down?
I am the type of person who usually backs down. Well, actually, I’m moving and created an insane schedule to get it done. I forced my roommates to comply and we ended up getting a new apartment within one week. I guess that’s the most recent time I didn’t back down.
Myrtle–Willoughby Avenues station
Brooklyn, 2015
Mitchell S. Jackson
There There by Tommy Orange
When I moved to New York City I intentionally did not buy a TV because I wanted to reinvent myself as a reader. I grew up in Portland, Oregon, at a time when gangs and crack hit the Black community, and I ended up selling drugs on and off until I was in my midtwenties. Because of that, I went to prison for a little while. When I got out, I started writing. I’ve been in New York for seventeen years now.
I lived in Portland. For hippies and hipsters it’s definitely been deemed okay to do all kinds of drugs.
People say that I grew up in the whitest city in America, but I didn’t know that, because my community was Black. I didn’t see how segregated we were. For a white hipster, Portland is heaven. You get your microbrew, go to nice restaurants, and everybody looks like you. But the Black people who live in the community keep getting pushed to the periphery. I remember going to a meeting with the mayor where the chief of police and other city officials discussed the crimes of the week. All of the crimes were drawn on a map, and it was where the Black people had moved. I was like, “Oh shit, they can control this. They can actually place crime where they want it to be.”
How did you feel as a person affected by that crime placement?
In a sense I felt empowered because I was at the table, but I also felt a lack of power to effect any change. Still, I felt enlightened, and it made me think about other tactics that are used in America to this day.
What other tactics did you come across?
That the idea of whiteness was created to oppress people and that we are experiencing the decisions of people who were in power thirty years ago, especially when it comes to city planning. Historically, the prosperity of certain groups has been seen as threatening. Take Black Wall Street in Tulsa, Oklahoma. They had their own economy and a bunch of prominent leaders. They survived without outside influence because they shared resources among themselves. And then outsiders came through and burned it down.
In terms of people in power, who are you really interested in right now?
I’m interested to see what people do with their moment. What happens when the attention turns to you? How do you handle it? What do you say? What do you write? What do you not write? I’m really interested in Marlon James and Tommy Orange and what they do next.
Tommy Orange wrote There There, which is essential reading.
Yes, There There shows the state of contemporary Native America and it makes the struggle and the violence against Indigenous people visible. I love the book’s interlude and that it offers historical context while implicating the reader. The United States has been perfecting genocide for ages and this book sheds light on our lack of access to Native history. We learn the United States’ perspective in America and we never hear the opposite. But I’m an optimistic realist. The white man is on his last leg and he realizes that. That’s what we’re feeling all over the world, his desperation.
What fills you with hope while we’re suffering from that desperation?
I was just in a barbershop and my barber was playing The Love Below by Outkast. I used to love Dre and Snoop, but their ethos does not stand up to time. Some of the stuff they’re saying hurts my ears now. [Laughs.] When I listen to Outkast, I still agree with their words. That gives me hope, that you can make something powerful and timeless because it’s about love.
C Train
Manhattan, 2019
Regan de Loggans
The Young Lords: A Radical History by Johanna Fernández
The last time I felt in my power was when I went fishing. I love fishing. It’s not just a way of providing food—fishing is important because I am Mississippi Choctaw. The name of our tribe is People of the Rivers. We used to navigate the Mississippi River with all of its smaller creeks and brooks. The last time I went fishing, I caught a huge fish with the help of some Indigenous friends. We sat down, cooked it, and ate with our fingers. We smiled at each other while fish juice dripped down our wrists, and we licked our fingers while giggling. I hadn’t felt a moment of connection with the land and water like that in such a long time.
